I think it was Woody Allen who said: "I don't have a problem with change -- I just don't want to be around when it happens." It seems we live in a society where progress is paramount and history is too often forgotten. The problem with most progress is that it is driven by greed rather than by a legitimate need for change. Such is the case in my neighborhood, where a local historic landmark is facing demolition in the face of the seemingly epidemic proliferation of premium coffee franchises. I felt I had to take a stand.
When I first moved out here, I spent some time hanging out at my buddy Brian's apartment. He let me use his computer to work on my screenplays while he was at work. I liked the area and took many long walks looking for apartments. During one of these walks, I stopped at a burger stand called Irv's Burgers and had a very tasty turkey burger. Right then and there I decided that this was the neighborhood for me. Any neighborhood that had a place like Irv's was right up my alley. In fact, I ended up taking an apartment just two blocks down the street and soon became an Irv's regular.
Now it isn't just the burgers that make Irv's the best place to eat in town. The owner, Sonia Hong, also happens to be the most cheerful and sweetest woman you ever met. She greets every customer by name and personalizes each order with handwritten notes and drawings on the paper plates and bags. Over the years I have brought everyone I know to share in the Irv's experience and Sonia has treated all of them like family. Her's is truly a family place as her mother and brother work alongside her. Everyone who comes to visit me in L.A. counts Irv's as one of the highlights of the trip.
But Irv's may not be around much longer. The owner of the property wants to lease the space surrounding Irv's to a coffee chain called Peet's and their plan is to get rid of the burger stand to make room for a parking lot. "They paved paradise and..." Well you know how it goes. Anyway a bunch of Irv's loyal customers have banded together with a petition and letter-writing campaign to try and persuade the developers to allow Irv's to remain where it is. Irv's is one of the last of a dying breed of walk-up hamburger stands and is truly one-of-a-kind. The fact that Irv's happens to be located on the original Route 66 and was frequented by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin contribute to its historic value.
The other day I went over to Irv's for a "delicious" turkey burger. While I was there, a reporter from Channel 2 showed up and interviewed me for a story they were doing about Irv's. There has been quite a bit of media attention, including stories in the L.A. Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street journal.
I hope the Burger Brigade is successful, it would be sad to see Irv's disappear. There are too many shiny new things that lack substance and not enough shabby old things that have character. Maybe this time there are enough people who care about the shabby old things to actually make a difference. We'll see.
I got a double dose of civic duty a couple of weeks ago. That's exactly the kind of thing I've spent the past twenty years generally try to avoid. For a long time I liked to think of myself as "flying under the radar." I guess I even imagined myself a bit of an "outlaw" at times in my own naive and overly romanticized way.
For several years, when I lived in D.C., playing folk music for tips at a vegetarian restaurant and writing free-lance articles for American Heritage, I drove all around the city in an unregistered, uninsured car. I even got pulled over once, but somehow finessed my way out of it. I voted in the 1984 election, but after that I kind of lost interest. And yet I still ended up serving jury duty. I figured it was an easy 40 bucks so what the hell.
While I was in Brooklyn, attracting media attention as one of the "Funniest Unemployed Comics," I lived rent-free for the better part of a year after my landlord mysteriously disappeared. I failed to file several state income tax returns and defaulted on my student loans. I never registered to vote in New York; politics just seemed like an irrelevant nuisance to me. But once again I got called in for jury duty. This time the pay was only about 20 bucks, but I was unemployed so who was I to complain.
These days I am a little more respectable. My car is registered and insured and has a valid parking permit. I pay my taxes on time and I don't even get a refund. I'm never late with the rent and I even assisted the landlord in evicting a tenant who was creating an unsafe environment in our building. I register to vote and have served on two juries. In fact, two weeks ago I served on a jury and voted in the same week! How's that for good citizenship?
One thing that always strikes me about jury duty is that despite the fact that everyone whines about it and tries to get out of it, once the jury gets into the deliberation room, everyone seems to take it pretty seriously. Which is good because in this case we were sending a guy to prison for the rest of his life. But what was really cool about it was the way people allowed each other to disagree and to talk things out before they reached a final decision. In the end we all agreed on a guilty verdict on thirteen separate charges.
The day after that was election day. It was my first election since '84 and I was pretty excited about it. In fact I had registered specifically to vote in this election because I felt so strongly about the outcome. I felt like I couldn't sit this one out -- it was too important. So I did my civic duty and voted for the candidate of my choice. As it turned out I was disappointed by the final result of the election. And it made me think about the whole trial by jury process.
It's too bad the information put out by the candidates isn't subject to some kind of stringent requirements the way evidence in court is. Politicians can say whatever they want and there's no counsel to object to the impropriety or lack of foundation or irrelevance of it. And no judge to decide what's fair and what isn't. And there are no instructions for voters the way a jury gets instructed: Be impartial, don't base your decision on personal bias, don't pick a position and refuse to budge despite compelling evidence to the contrary, on the other hand don't be swayed by a passionate argument if your sure of your position.
Wouldn't it be cool if we could all go into a giant deliberation room and everyone would actually listen to each other's opinions and we could all decide together which candidate is best? I guess that's what we try to do anyway. We had the debates and they had moderators. We have plenty of time to gather the facts and discuss them with our friends. I tried make sure that I talked to people who didn't share my opinion to see if their reasons made sense to me. But what it seems to come down to is some people believed one guy and some believed the other. In a court of law, that would be called a "hung jury" and there would be a mistrial and they would have to try the case all over again. But in politics the same thing is called a "mandate."
That's democracy for ya.
I'm still glad I did my civic duty. Maybe one of these days I'll run for office. I wonder how much a councilman makes?
I have a picture on my bulletin board taken in 1998 in Sarasota Florida. It's a picture of me and my nephew Chris sitting in front of a fountain near the harbor. In the picture, I look about the same as I do now -- in fact as I sit here typing this, I am wearing the same shirt and glasses as I am in the photo. But Chris looks a lot different. In the picture he's eleven; today he turned eighteen.
I guess we've both been through a lot of changes since that picture was taken, but while I have mainly changed addresses and waist sizes, Chris has changed from a boy into a young man. When I talked to him today he was sitting in his dorm room in Boston preparing to go out for the evening to hear some live music with some friends. He has mid-terms and political discussions and girlfriend problems. He's beginning his life on his own and really seems to have a handle on things. Much more so than I did. When I was his age I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Still don't.
After I called him I started thinking about the trip we took to Florida together. See, that year Chris's Mom had to work the week Chris had spring break. All his friends were going on these cool trips somewhere and poor Chris had to stay home and do nothing. I thought it might be fun if he and I went to visit my parents for the week. It didn't seem fair for him to miss out on spring break. He was all for it and had two things he really wanted to do while we were there: visit Disney World and go deep sea fishing. I was really looking forward to having the chance to spend some time with him since I knew that it wouldn't be long before he was all grown up and too old to want to spend time with his boring old uncle.
On the flight down to Sarasota, Chris kept talking about DSF. When are we going DSF? Have you ever DSF'd before? I can't wait til we get to go DSF. What the hell is DSF? Deep Sea Fishing! Of course. Yeah, DSF is going to be pretty cool.
Meanwhile I had done some research on Disney World using one of those trip planning books they publish for compulsive list-making geek vacationers. I had devised a plan whereby we could see all of the major attractions in the morning and afternoon and then have time to go back and revisit Chris's favorites in the evening. The book told you which rides were crowded at which times so you could plan your route through the Magic Kingdom accordingly. I had two or three alternate strategies written down in my notebook and Chris and I discussed the best course of action. This kid was going to have the best spring break ever.
As it turns out, Chris really didn't know that much about deep sea fishing. He had a friend who had done it and come back with tall tales. It sure sounded like a lot of fun. And on a calm day, it might not have been too bad. But on the day we went out the sea was medium choppy with swells from 3-5 feet. Now for a good-sized fishing boat that's no real problem, but you are going to get a certain amount of pitching and rolling. And apparently the old Viking genes that my sisters and I inherited from our parents didn't quite filter down to the current generation. About ten minutes out of the harbor Chris started looking pale. After twenty he was queasy. And by the time we reached our destination and weighed anchor Chris was below decks throwing up. He wasn't the only one, mind you. About two-thirds of the boat was down there with him. Bunch of landlubbers I guess. I figured he'd just puke a couple times and he'd be O.K. You know how kids are.
A couple of times he did venture up onto the deck to see how I was doing. I felt guilty leaving him down there with a bunch of seasick tourists while I was sitting in the sun eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hauling in red snapper like nobody's business. But Chris wanted me to keep fishing. He said I was fishing for us both. What a great kid.
That night at my parents house, we had a red snapper feast, prepared with my special garlic, lime and ginger sauce. Man they were tasty. Poor Chris wouldn't touch them though. I guess they reminded him too much of the four hours he spent puking.
Thank God for Disney World. We followed my plan to a "t" and it worked perfectly. We got to all of the big-ticket rides early and figured out which ones we wanted to go back to. We had lunch right on schedule at a place recommended in the book as having the shortest lines. We got the advanced reservations for the long lines so we could back later and bypass the poor suckers who didn't read the book and cut right to the head of the lines. We saw everything we wanted and even finished ahead of schedule so we had plenty of time to go back and ride our favorite rides again.
Chris knew exactly which ride he wanted to go back to, the one called Splash Mountain. And that was the only one he wanted to go back to. Not Space Mountain. Not Pirates of the Caribbean. Not Haunted Mansion. Just Splash Mountain. And we went on it again and again and again. Actually it was kind of nice after along hot day in the sun to just float around in a little boat (no waves) watching animatronic characters like Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear sing "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" and then ending up sliding down a log flume and splashing into a pool of water. On our third or fourth time around we came out of one side of the "mountain" and floated peacefully along with a perfect view of the Cinderella castle just as the fireworks were going off. It was almost as if we had timed it just for that to happen. It was one of those moments I'll never forget.
We both had a great time at Disney World and the whole trip worked out as well as I could have imagined. I was really glad to have the chance to spend time with my nephew and hopefully give him some good memories to carry with him. But what I realized today is that I wasn't really doing it just for him. That trip is one of my favorite memories too. And I'm lucky to have such an amazing friend like Chris to share those memories with. I hope we get to spend more time together like that in the future. But for now I just wanted to say thanks, Chris, for such a cool spring break.
